Sufficient time has elapsed, we believe, for the new government to provide a clear policy picture in relation to the level of support that the local small business community can anticipate from it in terms of initiatives that can help to strengthen the sector if only on account of the substantial job-creation and poverty alleviation weight that it carries.
One makes this point mindful that the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on the small business sector in such a manner as to force the closure of many of the various micro and small enterprises in areas like agriculture, agro processing and vending. These closures have arisen both out of reduced demand for some of the goods and services that they provide as well as pandemic-related strictures that either restrict or prohibit them altogether from plying their trade.
The fact of the matter is (and we have said so before) that outside the very limited initiative that saw a relatively small number of small businesses affiliated to the Small Business Bureau (SBB) receive a modest level of financial support from the Bureau (whether what they received would have been able to ensure the survival of some of their enterprises over the past several months is probably questionable) no really meaningful provision has been put in place to help see small businesses in the agriculture, agro-processing and vending trades through this period. So, the sad reality is that some of these businesses have either folded completely or have diminished appreciably. We may not have the numbers but we are aware of the fact that these circumstances have resulted in job losses (which, in the longer term may well be permanent losses in many instances) and consequential loss of important personal and family incomes. One need hardly spell out the knock-on consequences of such situations.
The reality of the situation, of course, is that there was nothing that anyone could have done to forestall the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequences that derived therefrom even though, bearing in mind what we knew at the outset would have been some of the likely consequences for small businesses, there appeared to be, from the outset, no inclination to go beyond what was being offered to a limited number of small businesses through the vehicle of the Small Business Bureau.
One must of course point out that much greater numbers of small businesses than those registered under the Bureau exist in the various sectors, including significant numbers in our rural and hinterland regions and, moreover, that these provide important services to their respective communities. Accordingly, in circumstances such as those that face us at this time, remedial measures must also take account of them.
In the instances of significant numbers of small businesses in areas such as small farming, agro, craft production and vending, the nature of the Covid-19 crisis has meant that serious restrictions have severely retarded their ability to ply their respective trades. These restrictions have derived from both a mindfulness on the part of the business owners to the dangers of exposure as well as the requirement of compliance with official strictures that have to do with the spreading of the virus. Contextually, it should be noted that public gatherings that manifest themselves at Street Fairs and Farmers’ Markets (which help to boost patronage for most categories of small businesses) have been virtually set aside in the face of the pandemic.
We raise again not just the absence of any significant state-driven initiative to respond to these particular types of challenges that have impacted small businesses, but also what we believe has been the pointed and, we believe, unacceptable indifference of our Business Support Organizations (BSO’s) to the challenges facing the ‘lesser’ business enterprises in the country. Sometimes one gets the impression that entities like the Private Sector Commission (PSC) exist solely for the convenience of a cloistered circle of entrepreneurial enterprises and that those who are not part of that elite group must simply fight their own corner. Specifically, we have commented on what sometimes appears to be the single-minded preoccupation of the PSC with matters pertaining to the Local Content considerations that inhere in the oil and gas industry to the exclusion of all else; and while we are in no way indifferent to the benefits that can accrue to the economy as a whole from maximizing the opportunities that can derive from Local Content, we do not believe that this preoccupation should be allowed to engender a self-centred posture that leaves a legitimate part of the business community behind.
There are options to those that appear to obtain at this time and it is government and our BSO’s that must lead the way. Pursuit of those options must begin with an overall recognition of the fact that such provisions as exist for small business support locally are, for the most part, insufficient to do much more than ensure the persistence of their subsistence status and that if they are to grow, to become generators of growth, raise employment levels and do their bit for poverty alleviation, those contributions will have a knock-on effect on our state of being as a country. That, in our view, is not what obtains at this time.
Here we believe that government and the BSO’S must share the responsibility for affording small businesses a genuine seat at the decision-making table. We cannot expect to be excused empty trumpeting about the role that micro and small businesses have to play in the development of the country if we do not do more to properly position them to succeed. This is the juncture at which government and the mainstream private sector Business Support Organizations have to act.
